Project Evaluation

 In researching Maya Angelou I was inspired by her hard work with the civil rights movement and wanted to try and reflect this through my own film by making it about a social issue that was accessible to me. Hoping to also reflect the idea of bravery and overcoming fears from the original poem I decided to show somebody overcoming their dysphoria and changing into 'women's clothing'. Considering my late start to this project I’m very happy with the final film I have produced. My film is a shortened version of my original idea, cutting out the narrative and focusing on what I consider to be the core of the idea – I think this was very beneficial overall, helping to avoid distracting from main focus of the film.
 However, with time I would have liked to deeper explore experimental methods of film-making during my research process. With the very stylistic look of my piece because of the bold lighting I think that some non-conventional editing or camera techniques could have added another level to the piece - adding more abstract ideals to reflect the compatibility the protagonist feels with gender binary.

 In future I will try to pay more attention to understanding the contextual importance of my source material, as I feel this is something that lacked with my current piece. I was able to get an understanding of the piece and it's author but I feel I could have better tried to ascertain the context in which the poem was written and tried to reflect it's relevance through my own production.

 I was very happy with the results from our lighting workshop which inspired the bold lighting in my final film. Whilst experimenting with different coloured gels we found that when mixing gels on different lights the colour of shadows could be manipulated. I realised that this was an affective way to reflect the idea of gender binary - using blue lights when the character wears 'male clothes' and pink when they're conforming to traditionally female rules. This ended up as an essential aspect of the film and has been complimented by peers that saw the rough cut and our tutor, Sam.

 During shooting I realised that I had neglected to consider getting a make-up artist to ensure Jack's final look was more polished. However, upon reflection I think that Jack's inexperience reflects somebody starting to explore their gender identity.
 Despite this, if I made the film again I would have liked to pre-plan the outfit as the one from the final film didn't reflect the look I wanted to. This wasn't something I was able to consider during this production due to my limited time and budget; instead the outfit was a combination of clothes that I and my actor had, hoping to keep to the core idea of the film and find something that Jack was comfortable in. 

 The feedback I got to my rough cut was incredibly useful, helping reassure a few worries I had about the piece as it was and also in pinpointing a few extra issues to be fixed. Our tutor told me watch out as the film was beginning to border on something that could seem erotic - to avoid this I cut some clips and added in some extreme close-ups - acquired from re-shoots - hoping to re-focus the film. Sam also noted that the pacing at the beginning of the film was quite slow and implied an unnecessary anxiety to the character. This was a simple fix done by cutting down the lengths of some earlier shots. 

 Early in my research I considered having a big 'reveal' in my film, building enigma with close-ups to a reveal that the person putting on make-up and fishnets was Jack. Whilst this idea did not last long I do think it could have been impactful in the final film. When showing my film to peers I found that there was almost always a big reaction when Jack first took off the beanie to reveal his long hair - in future I could have concealed this till later in the film as it was one of Jack's natural aspects that seems traditionally 'feminine'.

Rough & Fine Cut review

Rough Cut:
My rough cut review re-enforced some of the issues with my film that I had already noted and brought up some extra issues and notes for me to look at.

• Avoid 'music video territory' - whilst the music in my rough cut was only being used as placeholder and more of an example of the type of music I was hoping to use, Sam suggested I focus more on real world sound. There is a small moment in the rough edit where I'd added a clip later on and forgot to remove it's audio - Sam said this was probably where he felt the most engaged as there wasn't a buffer from the music. I'm going to try and add a radio effect to my final music to make it appear diagetic to the piece. 
• Watch out for eroticism - This is something i'd been worried about when using the pink lights as they have a very warm feel and somewhat sexual connotations; combined with the subject of the piece it can appear as if the protagonist is in the window of a brothel. Obviously this wasn't my intention and I don't want to sexualise the protagonist or give the impression that they're cross-dressing for sexual purposes, however it's not something I want to remove completely as I feel the sensuality is important, showing that the character feels more attractive and sexier when dressed as a woman. 
• Cut more early on to add pace or cut less to build tension - Sam noted that the opening of my piece is rather slow and builds a tension that is unnecessary or unused. Since there isn't really a 'reveal' within my piece the anxiety that comes from the drawn out shots early on isn't explained and seems rather confusing.  He suggested to cut more or less but to commit to it: make the beginning choppier to show how disjointed the protagonists feels and how they want to escape that feeling quickly or to keep it tense, reflecting their discomfort in the situation and build to a reveal of cross-dressing.
• Imply meaning to everyday objects - Sam noted that he enjoyed the close up shots of the boots and the nail varnish that I'd used and suggested building on them by considering more, especially towards the actions like using lip gloss. Make up can seem like a very basic, every day object for a lot of people but it can be very important to a queer person who can see it something that makes them feel more complete in themselves. I could use extreme close-ups to highlight this, showing their importance to the audience by making these regular objects seem more important. 

Fine Cut:

 Our tutor, Sam was very happy with the changes I'd made to my piece. I'd fixed the pacing issues at the beginning by shortening some clips and re-shot for some extra extreme-closeups and to capture a couple of extra shots. He noted how the lighting from my new shots matched the old ones without any error and complimented how the whole film flowed a lot better, without any unnecessary anxiety from long, drawn out clips.
 However, whilst he preferred the piece of music used (Port Horizon) compared to the old one, he did note that the electronic sounds lasted slightly too long and were quite jarring to the ear. This was something I was aware of and will search on the site I found it from for a version without the electronic sounds or I will change the volume of it & change the EQ to make it less jarring. Upon searching on Incompetech I found that the only way to remove the electronic radio frequency sound was to purchase the uncompressed version of the track - if this was a larger project with an established budget I would have followed up on this; instead I have turned down the higher frequencies via the EQ, which I think makes the track less jarring.

Soundtrack choice

 I always wanted a piece of music without lyrics as I didn't want to detract from the visual aspect of the film - which was already quite extreme with the lighting cues. I started with a basic song to edit to - which our tutor warned me made the film start to look like a music video. Once my rough cut was complete I began looking for alternatives, searching for a piece of classical music instead of the electronic style I had gone for beforehand.
 I would have ideally used Kaikhosru Sorabji's 'transcendental studies no18 'Liscio. Tranquillamente scorrevole' - a piano piece that's allegro movement up and down the keys I thought reflected the ideas of binary reflected in the piece. However, due to copyright  protections for all versions I found this choice was unusable.

I finally settled on Port Horizon ("Port Horizon" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ from Incompetech. I was initially intrigued by it being described as "unclassifiable" which I felt resonated with the themes of my film. Upon listening I found this reflected through the contrast of short wave radio frequencies and  real-world instrumentation. I thought this highlighted the ideas of subverting the gender binary presented through the film.